1. Washington Irving(1783—1859)——
was America’s first internationally—known man of letters (B. Franklin was internationally known but as a diplomat not a man of letters). Born into a wealthy New York merchant family, Irving decided to follow a literary career. He gained a reputation as a burlesque humorist in his “Salmagundi” essays and in his "History of New York by Diedrick Knickerbocker.” Six or seven aimless years followed the tragic death of his fiancé. He went to England on business, mad the acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott and other literati. There he had his greatest literary success, "The Sketch Book." It’s 30—odd pieces included what has been called the first modern short stories. He traveled all over Europe. He wrote “The Alhambra”, a Spanish counterpart of “The Sketch Book." He returned to America after 17 years and wrote travelogues and biographies.

2. James Fenimore Cooper(1789—1851)——
was the first major U.S. novelist. He wrote his first novel “Precaution” on a dare——to prove to his wife that he could write a better book than the sentimental English novel she was reading. By the time he finished he had written 32 novels along with a great many commentaries on society, manners, politics and history. His most famous novels were his five “Leatherstockings Tales” about the American frontier and the frontiersmen Natty Bumpo. Cooper also wrote eleven sea novels with the protagonist of Long Tom Coffin. He also wrote novels of the Revolutionary Period.

His old-fashioned discursive style(of the historical & sentimental novel tradition) no longer attracts the modern reader. In fact this style was obsolete during Coopers lifetime(cf. Twain’s criticism of Coopers style, pp.856—859).

3. William Cullan Bryant(1794—1878)-—
was a poet of nature who was best remembered for “Thanatopsis.” He was also, however, editor for 50 years of the New York Evening Post. A descendant of early Puritan immigrants, Bryant was raised in religious New England conservatism and early wrote pious doggerel. But in “Thanatopsis” (from the Greek for “a view of death”, which he wrote when he was 17 and which first gained him fame, he Puritan doctrine for Deism. Thereafter he was a Unitarian. Turning from Federalism (in his politics) he joined the Democratic Party and made the Evening Post an organ of free trade, free speech, workingmen’s rights, and abolition. Bryant was second only to Longfellow as the most distinguished poet of the times. Disillusioned with the human race, Bryant found consolation in nature, yet he never hesitated to lend his support to liberal causes.

4. Edgar Allen Poe(1809—1849)——
The creator of the American Gothic tale (e.g.: “The Fall of the House of Usher”) and of the whole detective fiction genre (e.g.:“The Murders of the Rue Morgue”), Poe cultivated the literature of mystery and the macabre to an extent unknown before. His life was a list of misfortunes. When Poe was less than 3 years of age his father deserted his family and his mother died of tuberculosis. Poe was raised by the Allen’s, a family of merchants. They educated him in England and in Virginia. Poe enlisted in the army, taught 8 months at West Point, wrote 2 slim volumes of poems, edited 5 magazines, married, wrote “The Raven” which earned him great fame and $10.00. His wife died in 1847. Poe’s last two years were stories of poverty, intoxication, frequent illnesses, mistaken love affairs, a libel suit, a suicide attempt and fine poems.

Poe’s mind is a study in duality. On the one side he was a romantic, an idealist, and a visionary. He sought a transcendent dream world of inviolate beauty but was drawn to the nightmare world of hooks and madness. On the other side he was a neoclassic——conspicuous for his close observance of minute detail in his narratives and settings and for his brilliant critical analysis (cf. Hawthorne’s “Twice Told Tales”). In Poe’s masterpieces both sides of the duality——imagination and logic——are fused into a masterful unity of tone.

5. Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803—1882)——
Essayist, poet, lecturer, leader of the “American Renaissance”(1835—1865), catalyst for Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne, and Dickinson, and cultural middleman for European and Asian ideas which passed to America, Emerson began as a deistic Unitarian in the coldly rational Neoclassic tradition. The death of his wife and other considerations caused him to abandon the Unitarian ministry in favor of the warmer and more mystical Transcendentalism——the American form of European romanticism——and in favor of the lecture circuit. In his essays and lectures he preached his faith in religion of the self, the religion of the indwelling divinity. He dismissed religious institutions and the divinity of Jesus as dodges or failures to realize that God incarnates Himself in all men. Men are differenced from Jesus only in the degree to which they are unaware they are god. Though his more mature middle writings showed an awareness of man’s limitations, Emerson showed the influence of Darwin’s theory(1859) in his stress upon goodness emerging from evil. The Civil War ushered in a period of Realism in American letters and virtually destroyed Transcendentalism. Emerson influence on later thought has been divided; his individualism has influenced modern existentialism; his reform——minded moralism has contributed to the growth of Statism and the idea of the State as the total repository of divine and sovereign justice.

6. Henry David Thoreau(1817—1862)——
Thoreau’s greatness lies in the power of his ideas. He had only two principle ideas and neither were original but he lived these two ideas and he wrote about them in a very lining prose——style. One of these ideas was that the world of woods and streams was good while the world of streets and crowds was bad. The other was that man should follow his conscience and stand for what he thinks is right no matter what the costs. These two ideas were exemplified by his two main symbolic actions: his lining two years in a cabin at Walden Pond and (in the middle of these two years) his spending a night in jail for civil disobedience. His problem was that he could not reconcile the two——he never found morality in nature though he searched diligently. As his Transcendentalist philosophy faded in later life these two things (nature and grace, let us say) began to slowly move apart. On the one hand he became a naturalist collecting botanical specimens for himself and reptilian specimens for Harvard. On the other hand Thoreau became a political activist (John Brown replaced Emerson in his affections) and did his bit for expanding the powers of the Federal Government.

7. Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804—1864)——
While Emerson was concerned with finding transcendent realities through observation of man in nature, Hawthorne was concerned with finding spiritual realities through observing man in society. Hawthorne's realities lay in the Calvinistic spiritual world of original sin and natural depravity rather than in the physical world. He used physical objects(e.g.: “The Scarlet Letter” and “The Minister’s Black Veil”) and people(e.g.: “Rappaccini's Daughter”) merely as symbols to portray the complexities and implications of Calvinistic spiritual reality. Hawthorne was an anti—transcendentalist because the reality which he found beneath the pattern of physical reality was an evil reality. He saw the universe not as a perfect harmonious unity, but as a flawed fabric. The flaw in the fabric was evil. The manifestations of this evil were sin and guilt. He wrote “The Scarlet Letter”, The House of Seven Gables”, “The Twice Told Tales”, and “Mosses from an Old Manse”.

8. Herman Melville(1819—1864)——
was another anti—transcendentalist who would not accept simplistic and easy answers. To Melville the natural forces of the universe were malignant or, at best, uncaring. He determined that the natural state of man was depravity. He explored the idea of original sin in the form of the evil nature of man as well as the pervading force of the universe. Whenever one of his earlier characters attempted to be noble, either his natural or social environment crushed him. Thus, Melville’s early attitude was pessimistic, for he saw both man and nature as elements of an evil and malicious universe. In his later works, particularly “Billy Budd,” Melville modified his pessimism. He granted the possibility that man in his original state was innocent and virtuous. However, this virtue was either corrupted or destroyed by contact with other man. Thus, late in life, Melville returned to the basic romantic notion of the noble savage. Some of his novels were “Typee,” "Omoo," “Moby Dick,” and “Billy Budd.” His two best stories were “Bartleby,” and “Benito Cereno.”

9. The Brahmins-—
­were the old, socially—exclusive New England families from which came Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell. It was the Brahmins with their genteel, rational humanism who exerted the dominate influence on American literary taste until the 1890’s despite the more radical masterpieces of the (non—Brahmins: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Witman, Poe, and Twain).

10.. John Greenleaf Wittier(1807—1892)——
was the antithesis of the Brahmins. His background was poor rural, and Quacker. He was a poet, jouralist and for a decade, the leading voice for abolition in America. His best—known work was “Snow—Bound”. He died admired and quite wealthy.

11. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807-1882) ——
was acclaimed by the people of his own day as the greatest of all American poets, though he violated all of Poe’s conventions against great length, preachiness and didacticism in poetry. Longfellow made poetry universally popular in this country. He wrote “Song of Hiawatha,” “Skeleton in Armor,” “Evangeline," and “Courtship of Miles Standish.”

12. Oliver Wendell Holmes(1809—1894)——
was the Brahmin of the Brahmins. His life was wrapped up in Harvard where he was first a student and the a professor of medical science. He did not consider himself a man of letters nor a professional poet——only a gifted amateur. For the “Atlantic Monthly” he wrote an essay series, “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” concerning a wide variety of topics——but primarily for the amusement of his friends. Unlike Poe, however, Holmes wrote poetry that was primarily concerned with truth rather than beauty. His poetry was, in fact, more neoclassic than romantic.